The Age of Consent

'The Dead Lovers'

Nigel Bruce

• 1 min read
'The Dead Lovers'
Cleveland Museum of Art

So much for love beyond the grave. So much for Adam and Eve. The late Renaissance German painters were not sentimentalists; they were moralists. These extraordinary oil paintings - shown above and below - are a pair. They are by an unknown Gothic painter, possibly "the Master of the Upper Rhine," from around 1470, and both paintings were sawn apart in the early 20th century.

Above is A Bridal Couple, shown here cropped. Below is The Dead Lovers (also known as The Deceased Lovers, Les amants trépassés and even The Rotting Pair).

Memento mori... Remember you will die...

Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg.
For Adam, a mouldering skeleton
Lay bleach'd on the garden of Eden;
And Noah as white as snow
On the mountains of Ararat.
  • William Blake (The Song of Los)